“This is a way to promote the media for others to adopt. The Lume Pad, Fattal said, provides a “reference design” to demonstrate the strength of lightfield-based products, much like how Surface laptops and tablets showcase Microsoft’s flagship software. “We often say that technology only creates value when it can solve our clients’ problems,” said Li, who frequents trade shows in China with his team to seek inspiration for new solutions for more business partners and niche opportunities for Leia. Tapping into specific industries such as medicine and education to solve problems for business partners is part of Leia’s broader strategy. “There’s the pinnacle aspect of getting information to the doctors so they can better understand what they’re going to do, and the patient communication aspect is how you communicate the details of a surgery,” Fattal explained, adding that aside from complex medical procedures, cosmetic surgery is a great example where doctor-patient communication requires a high degree of accuracy to define expectations. ![]() And for medical training, lightfield displays can replace VR headsets, where the lighting, resolution, and general experience is often compromised, he said. The 3D visualization can make communications between doctors and patients clearer, eliminate misunderstandings, and lower the risk of disputes, Li Xiaojin, one of Leia’s China-based business development professionals, told KrASIA. In China, lightfield displays are being tested and used in the medical field in three specific scenarios: body anatomy, 3D reconstruction of organs, and training for complex procedures such as endoscopies. “We’re able to present on the lightfield display because we have multiple views, and we can change the amount of light that is going to propagate in different views.” “If you look at a shiny car in the sunlight, there’s going to be a lot of light in a given direction of space, and maybe not too much light in the others-that’s what creates the very bright spot,” Fattal said. But in these cases, 3D depth can only be viewed from a certain angle, whereas Leia has found a new way to demonstrate the immersive effect. Creating opportunities to showcase lightfieldįor Chinese audiences, the most common 3D forms these days might be the giant outdoor advertising screens in the city centers of Chengdu, Kunming, and Guangzhou. A former researcher at HP Labs, David Fattal founded Leia with co-founders Peng Zhen and Pierre-Emmanuel Evreux in 2014. Leia produces an Android tablet called Lume Pad that allows viewers to switch between 2D and 3D displays. The company also offers graphics algorithms that can cast existing content in three dimensions, providing a taste of what lightfield-based holographic projection could look like in the near future. Described by Stanford University as the future of VR displays, lightfield is a part of the developments in augmented reality and virtual reality, a sector whose value is expected to grow from USD 30 billion to around USD 300 billion in the next three years, according to data compiled by Statista. ![]() The two scientists are experts in this arena Fattal and his co-founder and CTO Peng Zhen have published their findings in the respected scientific journal Nature. “Lightfield equals depth plus light,” Fattal said. Having closed its Series C financing, the company currently has over 200 staff in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and a production center in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. “China is a very well-educated market in terms of tech, and what we bring to the table is a highly sophisticated effect that I think needs an appreciative audience,” said David Fattal, now CEO of Leia, in a Zoom call. The objective is straight out of science fiction films: 3D displays make medical scans easier to understand for patients, educational content becomes more engaging for students, and maps for drivers gain an extra dimension for clarity. Now, more than a decade after the fateful fire drill, the trio are casting their lightfield products in industries like medical imagery, education, and the automotive sector. The duo would go on to link up with Pierre-Emmanuel Evreux to establish Leia as a spin-off from HP Labs a year later, with bases in both Silicon Valley and Shanghai. The patterns were a starting point for lightfield, a holographic display technology that Fattal and Peng created in 2013. When everyone was calm, the people around them noticed eye-catching patterns emerging on the surface of one of the thin semiconductor slices. They picked up the materials they were running tests on and ran to the parking lot. In 2010, on a day when David Fattal and Peng Zhen were exploring the mysteries of novel physics at one of Hewlett-Packard’s research labs in Palo Alto, the fire alarm blared. ![]() Leia’s technology came about by accident.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |